Using Social Media Demographics: 3 Best Practices

How carefully do you consider the details of your customers? Are they men or women? How much discretionary income might they have? Are they just starting out, or easing into retirement? Answering these few questions, and differentiating both the in-channel marketing messaging and the landing pages they reach, can go a long way toward engaging customers in new and creative ways. Here are three ways to effectively use social media demographics.

In past landing page best practices articles on DigishopGirl’s blog, we’ve explored the importance of focusing on your customer when you build landing pages, in particular thinking about what they’ll want to see and whether that’s what you’re showing them. Let’s now think through both the landing page and the messaging that directs customers there, from the perspective of demographics.

For example, in a recent Pew Research Study, they found that women are more likely than men to use social networking sites, and that people ages 18-29 were the most likely to use social media – a whopping 83% of all internet users in that age range who were interviewed in that study. 67% of everyone they interviewed (all ages) used Facebook, and they found that Facebook is especially appealing to women, as is Pinterest. Twitter and Instagram are most appealing to urban residents.

So how do you use these trends to your advantage?

1. Know Your Social Media Demographics.

Consider your audience when building your social media presence. You wouldn’t canvas Twitter with offers to senior citizens. The audience isn’t there yet, and you’ll run the risk of spamming the customers you do have. Likewise, putting male-oriented images on Pinterest may not make sense just yet – but putting them on Instagram might.

2. Be Specific.

Use social media marketing tools (like Facebook Marketing) to reach the specific audience that you’re looking for – don’t throw out a big net and see what you can catch. You can use Facebook’s Marketing platform to target ads to specific customers, and you can use that service to find new customers too. But know who you’re talking to, and why. So think about how you can use social media’s vast demographic data and resources to find the specific customers you think will be most interested in what you’re selling.

3. Once You Have Them, Don’t Lose Them.

Have your landing pages cater to the audience you’re talking to. Again, we can’t stress enough that extra work up front can pay dividends later. If you have one marketing campaign that’s, say, talking to stay-at-home moms on Facebook, have the landing page that they reach when they click on it speak to them. Show them that you truly care that their experience with you is stellar.

Doing your homework ahead of time – and having a specific outreach plan for who you want to talk to and how – may mean that you talk to fewer people up front, but it will also mean that you’ll have a higher chance of converting those key demographics into long-term customers.